Recently I received an email from Telerik inviting me to try their new Rad controls for Windows 8 applications, for past few days I used some of these and in this post we’re going to take a look at two of them. First download them from Telerik.com. After installation, a Rad Controls for Windows 8 section will appear in your toolbox.
Using Rad Controls for Windows 8 in C# and XAML Windows Store app
Lets drag and drop RadHubTile from the toolbox to the designer and set some properties, this control allows you to use an image as a Tile. I have a created a new Windows Store app in C# and XAML, here’s the markup for the RadHubTile control
Now do a Ctrl+F5 and see that the image appears as clickable Tile, pretty simple huh?
Lets look at the slightly more customizable RadSlideHubTile control that lets you specify Top and Bottom content that changes just like Tiles on your Windows 8 Home screen, here’s the XAML
If you would like to use a global variable in your WinRT C# app, one of the ways to do that is below.
Declare a global public variable and a static context of your current app in App.xaml.cs, in the C# code below from Metro RSS Reader I have declared the ARGB color that I want to use across all Frames in the app.
1:publicstatic Color ARGBColor = Color.FromArgb(255, 145, 0, 145);
2:publicstaticnew App Current
3: {
4: get { return Application.Current as App; }
5: }
I can then use the above from the OnNavigatedTo event in any Frame like this
Once installed the app can be launched from the Windows 8 Home Screen like other Metro applications. The application comes with a default RSS feed which can be changed from the Application Bar. Start screen lists All items in the feed and clicking on any item takes you to a detail screen, on this screen from the App bar users can choose to Share this post via Charms and launch browser to read more.
The main view also links to Categories view which groups items in one or more categories.
I also did a quick screencast for current downloadable version and published it on Youtube, you can watch it below.
Other features
Clicking on category name from the main view takes you to category details view containing a list of items.
Using Search Charm you can lookup posts matching your search keyword.
Current Status
You can download the current stable release from the project’s homepage on Codeplex.com, it lacks some new features that we added recently, I will publish a newer version soon.
And I have also teamed up with my good friend Hammad Rajjoub and together we are working on many new features, some of them are listed below but we’d love to hear from you, so please give us your valuable comments and suggestions.
As said there are a number of exciting features planned for this app.
Enable Multiple RSS/ATOM feeds
To be able to read news from multiple sources
Show Read/Unread items
To be able to quickly jump to the Unread items
Save chosen Categories,feeds and others in Roaming settings
Where a user logs into Windows 8 from another PC or a tablet using his Live ID, the app will remember these settings across all devices.
Offline capabilities
For a disconnected or occasionally connected client, users can load newsfeed and be able to read them offline
Background Transfer
Load new items when the application is not running
Live Tile notifications
We’ll add notifications for new items in Live Tiles on Windows 8 Home screen so users don’t have to launch and click Refresh
These are some of the features we are working on, if you have installed Windows 8 Consumer preview we would like you to use it and let us know what you think.
